“But we’re in the middle of a campsite, and she was giddy over Brodie asking her to move in. I couldn’t do it.”
“The right moment will come, sweetheart. And if you want me to be there with you, I will.”
“How have things been going with the Elliot and Laurel investigation?” she asks, pivoting.
“This isn’t exactly the birthday conversation I had in mind when I set this up, Bookworm.”
“Tell me anyway,” she says with a shrug.
“There’s been nothing new,” I say.
“I had a theory, but I don’t want to overstep,” she says in a sheepish tone, like she’s worried what she’ll say will rock the boat.
While this is definitely not the wooing I anticipated for, talking to Erin about Elliot and the past soothes me.
I place my hand over hers.
“You could never. Tell me your thoughts,” I murmur.
“Roger said the social worker told him my dad died in a car accident. It made me wonder if he was lying just to hurt me. Or if that’s what someone told him.”
She stares down at the empty nacho bag, her voice quiet and delicate.
“None of the social workers or cops ever talked to me about my father. It was like they didn’t think they needed to because there was never any indication I was there that night and saw what happened. Sometimes I wonder if that whole night was planned. Like…a hit.”
“I think someone’s been reading one too many mafia books,” I say with a playful chuckle.
“Maybe,” she says, but there’s a seriousness behind those pretty brown eyes.
“The man with the tattoo who came for me—I think he worked for the woman who shot my dad. Maybe she sent him to cover up what really happened. To make sure no one asked questions.”
She looks up at me then, eyes focused and a little hesitant.
“What if while you’ve been trying to find answers, someone who doesn’t want you to have them has been working just as hard to keep them buried?”
I blow out a slow breath.
“It certainly feels that way sometimes,” I admit as her words sink in. “I just don’t know who that could be, why they would do that, or how it ties back to Jack. But I guess those are the million-dollar questions.”
“Maybe we’ll find the answers in one of my many mafia books,” she says, trying to lighten the mood. I find that it does, but underneath the teasing, an unspoken understanding passes between us.
We aren’t strangers to loss. We know what it’s like for our past to crawl out from the darkest corners of our minds and grab hold of us by the throat. We know how it feels to be helpless and afraid. To blame ourselves for things we couldn’t stop or change.
When Erin talks about her father, I see that eight-year-old little girl, terrified, hidden, and forced to carry the weight of a secret far too heavy for her tiny frame.
And when I talk about Elliot, the way she looks at me, it’s not pity or sympathy. It’s recognition. It’s understanding.
The pain forged from our losses will always be there. I have no doubt it’ll bounce between being loud and forceful while also lingering like a dull ache. But, despite the pain, we’ve survived the things that should have broken us.
When her hand stretches out to cover mine, I feel everything she’s communicating without words deep in my bones. She doesn’t need to say it out loud. We both already know.
We’re each other’s safe place to land.
I’m grateful for that. For her. For these moments we get to share where instead of our grief isolating us or making us push the other away, it binds us closer together like a purposeful knot holding firm, strong, and steady.
I can face the waves, dredge through them, and navigate to shore without fear of being caught in the riptide and pulled under.
Because of her.
